


you could taste heaven perfectly

by blindmadness



Series: Crossover and AU Adventures [5]
Category: Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Elemental Blessings AU, F/M, Love at First Sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10080029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindmadness/pseuds/blindmadness
Summary: In another world, Sophie Beckett still meets Benedict Bridgerton at a ball. (An Elemental Blessings AU.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the single most niche thing I've ever written; I guarantee that the friend who (unwittingly) requested this and I are the only two people alive who have read both of the series in question. :") It's such a fun AU concept because the universe is so creative and distinct, and most of Sharon Shinn's books are basically romance novels at heart, so atmospherically it fits right in.
> 
> If you want to know more about the world this is set in, [this](http://www.sharonshinn.net/troubledwaters/) is a good place to start, but to sum up: everyone has an affiliation with one of five elements (air [elay], wood [hunti], fire [sweela], water [coru], and earth [torz]), and each element has a sort of aristocratic family whose leader is called the prime, who can control said element. Everyone gets three blessings at birth, which are pulled at random from a set of 43, and each blessing is affiliated with an element. People also pull blessings (usually in sets of three) for auspicious moments in life or when they need guidance, sort of like low-key tarot or divination. The blessings Benedict and Sophie have here were pulled by me from my own set, at random, and I think they're super fitting. (I ended up pulling them for all the other Bridgertons, too, even though it wasn't necessary, and am happy to share what came up for them. >_>)
> 
> Title comes from Tori Amos's "A Sorta Fairytale," following my tradition of naming Bridgerton fics after songs on JQ's soundtracks for them.

“Will you at least tell me your blessings?”

Sophie Beckett can’t believe that any of this is real, that it’s truly happening. That she’s attending a masked ball in the palace in Chialto, a city in which she’s never set foot before tonight; that she’s wearing a magnificent dress, more beautiful than anything else she’s ever owned. That she’s experiencing a taste of the life that might have been hers if her stepmother had ever accepted her, the food and the company and the glamour. That, incredibly, unbelievably, she’s dancing in the arms of Benedict Bridgerton, as if she has a right to be there.

Well—though the rest of her appearance here is a charade, she can’t bring herself to feel as if she isn’t meant to be here, with Benedict. She isn’t who she claims to be (a lie by omission, she tells herself, but it still falls far short of the truth), and she knows she doesn’t belong here, in the palace. But she finds herself feeling, regardless of the circumstances, as if she belongs with _him._

And hard as it is for her to believe, unlikely as it may be, he seems to feel the same way.

That’s why he’s looking at her now, having stolen away to the edges of the ballroom, flirtation sparkling in his gaze, but with an underlying seriousness to his expression and his tone. He seems as intense as she feels, as overwhelmed by the feelings flooding between them. It seems impossible that they’ve only just met. She thinks her soul must have known him forever.

She smiles at him, similarly flirtatious, an expression that she didn’t know she was capable of making until just now, when faced with the right person. “Why?”

“I want to see if they’re auspicious.” He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, his gloved fingertips lingering along the curve of her jaw.

Her smile turns teasing now, even as shivers are dancing down her spine. “You mean you want to see how many are hunti?”

Benedict’s own smile turns wry. “Not necessarily. Only one of mine is, after all.”

Sophie knows. Most people probably can’t name every blessing of the Bridgerton siblings, the seven brothers and sisters of the current hunti prime, Anthony, but it’s common knowledge that though most of them carry a hunti blessing, only three—Anthony himself, Benedict, the second oldest, and Hyacinth, the youngest—affiliate that way. It’s unusual for a family of primes, but then again, both of their parents were torz (Anthony had inherited the title from their father’s brother), so maybe it wasn’t so surprising that they’d had such a varied group of children.

“Courage, right?” she asks, though of course she knows. Most people probably can’t name every blessing of the Bridgerton siblings, but she can. At any given moment she could list off the blessings of every immediate family member of every prime; she doesn’t have much in the way of other entertainment to occupy her days. “And your other blessings are flexibility and surprise.”

He raises both eyebrows, clearly impressed. “Very good,” he murmurs. “I didn’t think they were so well known. But I suppose the incongruity is amusing, and so easier to remember.”

“What, a hunti man with two coru blessings?” Sophie smiles. She can’t seem to stop herself, tonight. “As many of your siblings are coru as they are hunti; I wouldn’t think it was so unusual.”

“If you met my coru siblings,” Benedict says, “you could certainly distinguish me from them without much effort.”

His tone is wry, but with something of a twist, almost a little bitter. Sophie finds herself asking, before she can think better of it, “Is it—difficult? Being one of the only hunti siblings in the family of the prime?”

He looks startled, shooting her a wondering expression—is it possible no one’s asked him that before?—before responding slowly, “It’s certainly strange. Hyacinth—my youngest sister—there are so many years between us, I hardly know her. Most of the siblings with whom I have any sort of real relationship are coru. Being the two eldest and both being hunti—I think it’s bonded me and Anthony, certainly, but it is a strange feeling. I shouldn’t be the outsider, and yet…”

Part of Sophie understands, but part of her marvels that he can feel that way. By all accounts, the Bridgertons are a close family, loving and loyal and large and everything Sophie’s always wanted. What can it matter if they affiliate with different elements? It doesn’t change their hearts.

Benedict lets his words trail off; when it becomes clear that Sophie doesn’t have a response, he shakes his head a little as if to clear it and gives her a small, quizzical smile. “Forgive me. I can’t imagine why I’m going on like this. It seems the blessing of surprise is more apt for me today than ever before.”

Sophie can’t help agreeing. When she’d been leaving for the ball, there had been time enough to only pull one blessing. She thought, upon seeing the broad curves of the glyph in had hand, that it made sense, of course. Everything about the night had already been a surprise to her; surely more was coming. But she could never have anticipated this.

What she says, though, forcing her tone a little lighter, is, “Flexibility, too, I imagine. I take it the night is going in directions you didn’t expect, but you’re adapting impressively well.”

Benedict gives her a teasing smile in return. “I’m doing my best,” he says, then adds, a little lower, “And courage? It seems I may need that, too.”

_Courage._ Yes, Sophie thinks she’ll need it as well. But in a different way than Benedict means: the courage to walk away from him, to go back to her normal life that won’t ever have him in it again.

She finds herself, in her search for a distraction, blurting out the answer to his earlier question: her blessings. “Clarity, certainty, and joy.” She finds her mouth twisting in the familiar, slightly bitter smile she’s worn for years. They’ve often seemed more like curses than blessings, reminders of things she feels she may never have.

Benedict nods, slowly, absorbing the information as if she’s given him a rare gift to treasure and savor. “They seem fitting,” he says softly, and Sophie wants to cry. “Do any of them match your affiliation? I can’t imagine you’re a woman of wood or fire, but any of the others—”

“Elay,” she says. The cruelest irony, that the only one of her blessings that aligns with her element is the one that seems least fitting of all. And she can’t help adding, because it seems she has no guard against being too honest with Benedict, “Though I have to admit there hasn’t been much joy in my life.”

Benedict’s eyes stay on hers as he raises her hand to his mouth, speaking softly as his lips brush her skin, “I can’t say the same—but I think that you might have brought more into it than there ever was before.”

And she can’t speak, because she knows that the same is true for her, and she feels as if her other blessings have never been more fitting than they are tonight, either. The clarity to know what’s right in front of her—and the certainty that she can’t hold onto it the way she wants to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and then, of course, I decided that it wasn't _really_ done and needed a little coda. :'D The blessings here are very much not random, ha, because every story needs a little contrived magic.

It’s not the wisest course of action, slipping through the dimly lit hallways of the palace during the ball, hand in hand with Benedict, but Sophie has accustomed herself to the knowledge that someone else, someone luckier and bolder, more luminous and confident, has possessed her tonight. It’s the only way she can get through it, knowing that she’ll have to leave it all behind soon.

But not yet, she thinks as they rush to avoid a passing servant, suppressing quiet laughter like children. Not yet.

They sweep around corners and run down long halls until they reach the quarters of the hunti prime, Benedict’s brother Anthony. “There’s always space for us in Anthony’s rooms,” he told her earlier, “and there’s always a bowl of blessings in the _kierten,_ near the door. We draw one whenever we’re arriving or leaving the palace.”

He mentioned this when he suggested, his eyes alight, that they should draw blessings, now, here, together. She had thought that the nearest temple was too far away to easily reach, but Benedict simply smiled and spirited her further into the palace, someplace she never dreamt she would ever go.

Benedict unlocks the door and they slip inside, laughing again as they close the door behind them. The _kierten_ is impressive, of course, all polished wood and high ceilings, illuminated by flickering shadows as Benedict lights a few candles. It should look sinister, but tonight nothing as it should be, and Sophie instead feels comforted, intimate, standing here with a near-stranger in the dim light, in a place she’s never been and won’t ever be again.

Benedict is crossing the room to the short, wide column by the door—a hunti ornament if she’s ever seen one—a dark brown bowl full of slim metal coins resting atop it. The bowl of blessings. He looks up at Sophie, sly smile on his face. “You first,” he says, hushed voice at odds with his mischievous demeanor.

Sophie suspects that he feels it, too, the reverence of the moment, the weight of their connection. She joins him by the bowl, takes a deep breath, and plunges her fingers in, shivering a little at the cool feeling of the metal, even through her gloves. 

After a moment of sifting through the blessings, her fingers close on a tile, and she lifts it out, her heart in her throat as she turns it over—and feels her breath catch in a soft, disbelieving laugh. “Joy,” she whispers, turning it to show Benedict. She keeps her eyes down, on the glyph embossed into the coin; she doesn’t trust herself to meet his gaze.

“Now me,” he murmurs, voice too low to reveal any emotion, and Sophie drops her blessing—the one that’s seemed least fitting most of her life, the one that seems too real right now, the only one linked to her elemental affiliation—back into the bowl. Benedict’s fingers dive deeper, turning the blessings over and over, until he lifts one, slow but sure.

And she hears the same breathless, incredulous laugh emerge from him, and at that she does turn to see his face—almost fearful in its disbelief, but close to celebratory, too. And he turns to offer her the coin he drew, and the symbol on it looks familiar to her—

“Courage,” he says, and she raises wide, shocked eyes to him.

_His_ only blessing tied to his element.

“What is this?” she whispers, her voice sounding fearful to her ears, and, “I don’t know,” he says in return, his voice awed.

But it’s not true, is it? She knows, or at least she thinks she does. Both of them do.

“Now a third one,” he says, voice low and gentle. And he tips the blessing back into the bowl and reaches for her hand; she lets him take it, twining their fingers together. “Both of us,” he says. “Together.”

Sophie’s chest aches with longing, and all she can do is nod.

So they dip their hands into the bowl, barely managing to fit them both inside, digging their way through the blessings. And just as Sophie thinks she might have found the one to draw, she feels Benedict’s fingers closing over hers, solidifying the choice, as they both lift their hands out, together.

Sophie uncurls her fingers, slowly, under Benedict’s, and both of them stare, breathless, at the symbol on the coin. The room is silent except for the pounding of their hearts, which Sophie thinks she can hear, steady and stunned and heavy, as they look at the blessing in her hand.

Didn’t some part of her know—hasn’t she known since the moment their eyes first met?

_Love._

And in the ballroom, a clock begins to toll, signaling midnight, the time for the unmasking.


End file.
